Upcoming Gigs and News
The summer promises some outdoor gigs for picnics, charity walks, markets, and the like.
We spent most of April and May playing a series of benefits for groups helping refugees in and from Ukraine. On the one hand, we got to dig into a range of music from Ukraine -- not only from tried-and-true klezmorim like Naftule Brandwein, Dave Tarras, and Belf's Romanian Orchestra, but also from folks such as Vladymyr Baranovski and Pawlo Humeniuk.
More importantly, the various gigs brought in over $26,000 at the door. This doesn't include the individual donations made through our call from the stage and flyers that offered info on the charities and QR codes. And, we kept handing those flyers out at other gigs last month such as the Washington Salon in Olympia and the NW Folklife Festival. Plus, we know that the hundreds of people who viewed online reached into their credit cards and gave as well.
So --- thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to the musicians who joined us: Kesselgarden, Shpilkes, Brivele, Darren Loucas, Geoffrey Harper, & Eric Eagle. Thank you to the venues that presented us: Couth Buzzard Bookstore, the Royal Room, Kirkland Performance Center, Vashon Center for the Arts, and the Christ Episcopal Church in Tacoma. And thank you for attending or viewing online. And if you didn't or couldn't, here are links to the Klein Party sets at three of those venues (with a little video and audio tweaking).
These are free for the viewing, of course, but please consider donating to one of the groups linked below who are working on the ground in Ukraine and surrounding countries to help the over 10 million people who have been displaced by this horrific war. They are highly rated, efficient charities. They all work with partner organizations in the region. And they are not fly-by-night. They bring the same assistance to refugees in all parts of the world, and they have been doing so for a very long time.
